Large community garden takes shape in Rancho Cucamonga

RANCHO CUCAMONGA - While the city has seen the rise of commercial development over former farmland in recent decades, one group wants to keep the spirit of harvest alive with a large community garden on the east side of the city.

About 14 acres of land on a Southern California Edison easement near Foothill Boulevard and the 15 Freeway have started to clear for a 350-plot community garden, where residents will be able to grow their own crops.

The "Root 66 Community Garden" is adjacent to a shopping complex just west of Day Creek Boulevard, on the south side of Foothill Boulevard, and south of the Victoria Gardens mall.

The land was deeded to the Upland-based Restorative Justice Center of the Inland Empire, a nonprofit that will oversee the community garden's revenue and upkeep.

Dee Matreyek-Kurth, director and founder of the nonprofit and wife of former Rancho Cucamonga Mayor Don Kurth, said the project's goal is to foster a lifestyle for residents that includes exercise through caring for their plot, healthy eating, cost savings and helping the needy.

"San Bernardino County has the worst access to healthy food options anywhere in the states," Matreyek-Kurth said.

"Fresh produce is very expensive to buy. We just don't have a lot of access to homegrown fresh fruits and vegetables any more. I think there's a growing trend for locally grown produce ... Right now, we get all of our produce from the Central Valley or from South America, but, if we can have a 15-acre lot set aside, we can grow for a lot of people."

The community garden will contain 350 individual plots - either 10 feet by 10 feet or 10 feet by 20 feet, Matreyek-Kurth said. There will also be 5 feet by 10 feet raised beds for disabled people.

Anyone can annually lease or rent land at a $1 per square foot or $100 a year for a gardening plot that is 10 feet by 10 feet.

Matreyek-Kurth said she hopes organizations and churches can help fund plots for the needy as well.

Local high school students and Rancho Cucamonga Rotary Club members were among the volunteers who spent a recent Saturday clearing rocks and weeds from the site, which runs along a high-voltage power line easement.

The volunteers planted high nutrient grasses on the land, which are to be cut down next spring, prior to planting crops.

Matreyek-Kurth said the group also hopes to install a pump to obtain free underground water.

"The well is not in the jurisdiction of the (water district) so the property has the water rights, which in California is like striking gold, so we've got to sink a pump down there and get the water up," she said.

Shirley Simmons, a marketing consultant with Loma Linda University, is helping promote the community garden as part of an initiative with the school to encourage healthier lifestyles for area residents.

"If we can all start now to prepare to take responsibility for our own health and well being this would be the place to come and learn," Simmons said.